The LeagueBoard

A: OOC, I clearly know the answer here (or least think I do)- The Creeperian empire is more based on Spanish colonialism, where most else of Creeperian history is based on real life areas/places/nations that got positively dunked on by successive imperial domination by the Spaniards followed by the United States. But that’s a really unsatisfactory answer from an IC perspective because… it’s not an IC answer.

But what could cause that, IC? Well, I saw a YouTube video which piqued my interest in the concept of the imperial boomerang- the idea that methods and justifications of imperialism practiced in a country’s colonies will begin to bleed back into the domestic politics of the imperial power. I’m not entirely sure if this would work for explaining Creeperopolis’s economy- There’s certainly arguments to be made for the economy struggling from the “resource curse”, or from unequal exchange with other imperial nations in the world.

A: The obvious answer for me is that the imperial core is composed of Paleocacher, Groffenord, Quebecshire, Reia*, and Creeperopolis- All developed economies, and in at least two cases, former colonialist world powers.

Rakeo is in the imperial periphery because of its entanglement with Creeperian energy production. Lyoa is too- Without Creeperian economic/military support, the government would likely fall against Terranihilian-backed rebels. Sequoyah is literally under Creeperian boots (as is SCI).

Karimun is a different story- There’s no active military invasion of it, and no clear dependency on a foreign power. But the country isn’t really exerting force onto its neighbors, beyond keeping Lyoan groups north of its borders.

Then there’s a bunch of countries that I unfortunately don’t really enough about to classify. Countries like Salisford, Andaluzia, Yourtanad, and Reykanes.

(And then there’s the communist/psuedo-communist countries which are an entire different can of worms that I need to read more wiki on I might write more on them later here)

*Should Protocol Rendezvous return

A: I thought that finding a real life analogue would help- And if you’re looking for thinkpieces on why a place hasn’t industrialized, Africa is your best bet. Once I managed to scroll past PragerU tier takes that are basically racist screeds about how it’s because “brown people no smart”, I found three arguments.
- Geological determinism
If the resources weren’t available, the place didn’t industrialize. This is a pretty contentious, to the point where one of the people most famous for promoting it has to have a section on his website coping about receiving criticism from other historians
- Poor governance
If the governments of places couldn’t/wouldn’t protect nascent industries from well developed external industry, those internal industries died
- Unequal exchange
That because of the power of other countries, their exports would be undervalued and thus not build the same amount of capital as the same commodities would in a rich nation. If America suddenly found a natural resource somewhere in its borders, it would be able to mobilize the capital domestically to extract it, and probably already has the factors of production to convert it in a good worth a large amount- Compare that to a country in the global south, where the natural resources are mostly extracted through the deployment of foreign capital, the nation (and its workers) is nickeled and dimed for every step of the process.

We can actually see the process in action in Sequoyah- Because it lacked capital, it was forced to rely on other nations to extract its petrol. The Malgan Petroleum corporation (before it was struck from the canon) was going to be the owner of the factors of production, from the pumpjacks to the transportation, Sequoyah’s oil fields were to be Malgan in all but name.